The game provides opportunities and skills for the military metaverse

I/ITSEC NEWS: The game provides opportunities and skills for the military metaverse

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Orlando Florida – Military training in the Metaverse will require a unique set of cognitive skills that the game can help develop in future fighters, officials said Nov. 30.

The idea of ​​a metaverse is a virtual reality space that multiple users can enter and interact with in the same digital environment. Several departments of the Department of Defense have initiated programs to create military training platforms similar to the Metaverse, such as the Army Synthetic Training Environment and the Department of the Army’s Spaceverse. air.

Operating in an immersive virtual environment like the Metaverse creates intense cognitive load that services will need to monitor when introducing these technologies, said Maj. Gen. Heather Pringle, commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory. .

“When we’re talking about humans interacting with these machines and environments, how can we better tailor the environment to the skill level or cognitive load of the interacting operator?” Pringle said during a panel discussion at the National Training and Simulation Association’s annual Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education conference in Orlando. The NTSA is affiliated with the National Defense Industrial Association.

“We’re going to measure their cognitive load, stress, pupil dilation, heart rate, temperature, all kinds of physiological, neurological, behavioral, and cognitive inputs, so they fit in with what this human has. needed at that time. this mission and help them achieve mission fulfillment,” she added.

For operators such as Space Force Guardians who primarily fly missions digitally, the military must find ways to reduce cognitive load while increasing learning, said Lisa Costa, director of technology and Space Force innovation.

Additionally, the game can provide many of the cognitive disciplines needed for these missions, she said.

Players are 25 times “more likely to identify an object they’ve seen under stress than they’ve seen before,” Costa said. “So in other words, if you’re doing anomaly detection, you’re trying to avoid collisions, if there’s a threat, they’re 25 times more likely to identify it than someone who is not a player.”

About 86% of airmen and guards under the age of 34 identify as players, according to Costa, developing skills that can translate into their military training.

“They’ve spent decades learning to navigate different terrains, different environments, being able to cause different effects,” she said. “They connected through gaming networks so they could work with other people all over the world and at different age levels.”

And as recruits train in the military metaverse, the goal is for them to not only develop physical muscle memory, but also “cognitive muscle memory,” Costa said.

“We recruit for cognitive diversity,” she said. “And now we’re also trying to create that cognitive muscle memory, in terms of visualizing the abnormalities, by coming up with different approaches that we’ve never imagined before. … Those are two very powerful things when you start putting them together,” she said.

This is one of the roles the Space Force wants the Spaceverse to play in Guardian training, Costa said. The effort aims to build a universe that combines digital tools and physical assets to enhance a Guardian’s ability to innovate and operate in future conflicts, according to Space Force.

“We want the value of our very diverse Guardians to come together and come up with new ideas, new tactics, techniques and procedures, new doctrine, so that they give a lot more space of options to high-level decision makers” , Costa said.

Modern video game technology can also enhance virtual training environments so they can deliver the right mission scenarios to soldiers, said Lt. Gen. Maria Gervais, deputy commanding general and command chief of staff. Army training and doctrine.

“When you really looked at the playability that was coming out with their engines, it was a game changer…because it allowed us to create the physics for training inside of that environment,” she said .

“We have to keep in mind that the game is not a simulation,” she added. “What we are comfortable with is simulation. And the game is a different way of thinking about it and will provide different opportunities as we move forward.

Topics: Training and Simulation, Defense Department, Emerging Technologies